Or alternatively; is there any easier sport out there? I know everyone is not like that but there was an article, even here on T-Nation, where the author basically said that training is not really that hard. Sure, nobody can deny that benching 500 pounds or the equivalent is hardcore in its own right but getting there really is not that 'hard' in a very whole sense of the word. -

I don't want to pick apart specific names but I've seen people over the finnish bodybuilding scene testifying to how some people went from complete couch potatoes to national medalists in a year of training, mostly due to juicing of various sorts and were even getting wasted in clubs a month before their contest. Many big names in international/american bodybuilding allegedly did the same; getting drunk on a regular basis prior to competing. Dorian Yates himself said that he would not amount to much if his contemporaries had been more strict about their training.-

But perhaps nothing is as funny as saying that bodybuilding is a hard if not the hardest sport or that it consumes a person's entire lifestyle. Compared to something like the training of distance runners, who put in more effort in a day than any bodybuilder does in a month and which would probably kill a lot of jacked people, it's a joke.

It's also completely devoid of any diversity in training and does not require the development of any physical talent as such, just regular lifting, while so many other sports require so many different attributes from great strength endurance to fast reflexes and flexibility. Even the sports that don't tax the body to the extreme, like shooting, require top competitors to train several hours a day with 100% concentration.

All the bodybuilder needs to do is complete simple lifts for maybe 15 minutes a day and then lay on a sofa engaging in gluttony for the rest of the day, and bragging about how hard it is. -

The lifting does not even have to be hard in any completely objective sense; it just needs to cause an adaptation that the bodybuilder feels by himself as he is not competing against some objective standard, like a strength athlete. If he gets a hella burn from squatting 150 pounds and grows on it, fine. A shooter does not get any credit for missing the barn door even if it felt like a lot of effort because he or she needs to compete against an objective standard where "it feels so tough to me" is not enough. -

Sure, the shooter or the runner likely could not squat X pounds but squatting X pounds (to build muscle) is not really that different from squatting 100 pounds as the body adapts to it and ultimately it takes the same amount of effort to squat 500 pounds as it does to squat 50 pounds. It only takes a few seconds and then it's over and it does not hurt any worse than the 100 pounds did years ago when it was heavy.

But if someone wants to be an excellent shot, boxer, hockey player or a runner, they need to put far more time into training than if they just wanted to be 'good' or perhaps place 10th in a national final. The demands are always rising.